The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Despite the great utility of enabling mobile users to utilize mapping or navigation services, a common problem related to providing such services relates to identifying and indicating in a simple and convenient way various information relevant to a user based on a location on a map. Information on a map that may be relevant to a user may be indicated in one of three ways: (1) through a list of search results based on a keyword or category search; (2) through a point of interest indicator located on the map (e.g. a restaurant icon); or (3) through the look and feel of the map itself (e.g. indicating a park by coloring the map area green). Providing a list of relevant search results alongside the map may consume too much valuable screen space, due to size limitations of a screen. Additionally, it may be slower and less convenient for a user to try to correlate relevant search results with their respective locations on a map. Point of interest indicators may also create several drawbacks. For example, not every point of interest on a map may be relevant to a user, thereby adding unnecessary clutter to the map. Also, the indicators for multiple points of interest in close proximity may overlap making them difficult to locate on a map. Even changing the look and feel of the map may be limited to identifying large regions of a map rather than particular points. Another particular disadvantage of all of these indicators occurs when the map being displayed is zoomed in closely to a small area, as is typical in a GPS application. In this case, relevant information to the user may lie off of the currently displayed map making search results, point of interest indicators, and shaded regions ineffective in indicating the location and/or direction of the information.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to provide an improved mechanism by which information on a map that is relevant to a user may be clearly and quickly indicated to a user that may overcome at least some of the disadvantages described above.